Selling all my film cameras for an M11, arriving tomorrow

[MCF74]

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49 minutes ago, Jon Warwick said:

Resolution at 60mp is ample to exceed a drum scanned 120 film, especially C41.

Regarding “similar feel to images” off a 500CM, I think that is massively influenced by lens choice and especially your post processing. I am often striving to emulate a filmic look for my final prints, given I moved pretty late to digital from mainly 120 and 4x5 film. I have a portrait of my daughter that I’ve reprocessed various times from an SL2 + SL 50 APO. My initial effort was disappointing, with the print to my eyes looking “digital” (a mix of being completely grainless and more acuity - despite sharpening at zero in ACR - than I’ve ever seen off film, even off my 5x4). But  a subsequent effort is bang in line with my taste, thanks both to establishing the correct grain level in Photoshop that works for my print size and also adding “Blur” in filters which has calmed down the digital edge-sharpness of her eyes and hair to something I find significantly closer to a filmic look. None of this notably sacrificed fine detail either, but it’s a much calmer and more cinematic rendering now.

That's great to know. Thanks for the insight. 

M11 has now arrived and it's everything I hoped for initially – minimal, light, ergonomic interface, unfussy. Can't believe how light it is actually.

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[Kwesi]

1 hour ago, MCF74 said:

That's great to know. Thanks for the insight. 

M11 has now arrived and it's everything I hoped for initially – minimal, light, ergonomic interface, unfussy. Can't believe how light it is actually.

Enjoy it!

Please check to make sure you are running the latest firmware and if not, Leica Fotos makes it so easy to update wirelessly.

[sdk]

On 9/1/2022 at 8:38 AM, Jon Warwick said:

Resolution at 60mp is ample to exceed a drum scanned 120 film, especially C41.

Regarding “similar feel to images” off a 500CM, I think that is massively influenced by lens choice and especially your post processing. I am often striving to emulate a filmic look for my final prints, given I moved pretty late to digital from mainly 120 and 4x5 film. I have a portrait of my daughter that I’ve reprocessed various times from an SL2 + SL 50 APO. My initial effort was disappointing, with the print to my eyes looking “digital” (a mix of being completely grainless and more acuity - despite sharpening at zero in ACR - than I’ve ever seen off film, even off my 5x4). But  a subsequent effort is bang in line with my taste, thanks both to establishing the correct grain level in Photoshop that works for my print size and also adding “Blur” in filters which has calmed down the digital edge-sharpness of her eyes and hair to something I find significantly closer to a filmic look. None of this notably sacrificed fine detail either, but it’s a much calmer and more cinematic rendering now.

Yes, and even scanning film may give better results than enlarging in the traditional darkroom. I had someone want to buy a large print of a landscape diptych I shot with side by side with a Bronica 645 RF and its excellent 45mm lens, the combined negative area being about the same as a 6x9cm film image. I had one print feed on my wall that she saw, and I thought it was good. Made back around 2012 in a color darkroom at NESOP in Boston, Massachusetts (now the school is sadly defunct). I had another print on Fujicolor 20x30" paper, but it was a test print with mediocre color correction.

So I decided to capture the negative and print digitally on my HP Z9+ on 24" Canson Photosatin. I used my Nikon D850 (a 45MP camera), Zeiss 100nn/2 Makro Planar, a Gepe LED light panel, a glass film holder from my dead Nikon 9000ED film scanner, and a tripod. To my surprise the negative contained a lot more sharpness than the enlarger at NESOP had delivered. I think vibration of the machine had caused blurring of the image protected on the paper. So I was able to print a significantly sharper digital print the same image size, and the client will be thrilled when she picks it up. I am actually going to replace my C-Print framed copy with the inkjet version, it is that much better. The biggest pain was getting the image properly reversed and color corrected in Photoshop. With a copy stand and perhaps my iPad as a tunable color light source, I might be able to do even better on digitizing my medium format and Large format color negatives.

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by sdk